SustainableWork

The world of artisan foods entrepreneurship is in its infancy. Innovation in foods and everything connected to it will increase omni-directionally, as Bucky Fuller said, for as far as I can see. This move toward local foods and regional food systems will make better, healthier foods available to increasing numbers of people at increasingly affordable prices.

I want to help make the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen a platform for food innovators and entrepreneurs to take advantage of this emerging artisan foods marketplace.

One way we will launch this effort is through a program we're calling our Preparation Partnerships. In this process the Innovation Kitchen will prepare, process, package, store and distribute your food innovation for commercial sale.

I'm going to put the draft of this Preparation Partners plan into this blog post and then later move some of it forward as we see what works.

Our Preparation Partners will be food innovators - chefs, existing small food businesses, new food innovators, farmers, anyone who loves food. We will offer a partnership with the Innovation Kitchen to launch and grow artisan food businesses in a state-inspected, commercial kitchen.

Let's map out how this would work on one simple case.

Let's say you want to start or expand an artisan food enterprise.

As an example, let's say you wanted to start an food business around a soup or stew that celebrated a specific local food. [Editor's note: this is a very good idea.]

As a Preparation Partner you could have your recipe prepared and tested at the Innovation Kitchen in an artisan-batch, commercially relevant scale. If this works for all involved, we can help register your recipe and your new business with the state. Then, as a Preparation Partner, you can have your recipe prepared, packaged, and distributed for commercial sale on a contract basis through the Innovation Kitchen.

Here's an overview… The Preparation Partners program will be a platform you can utilize to launch your artisan food business without having to invest in an entire food processing facility and support networks on your own.

This Preparation Partner option will be the initial focus of the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen. We see 3 key processes making up this program.

Process 1. Will it work? As your Preparation Partner, we want your food innovation to succeed. We will work with you to prepare your recipe in artisan-scale, commercially-relevant batches. This insures your recipe will meet your goals for taste, quality, packaging, etc. when it is prepared in larger volumes in a commercial kitchen. Think of it as a 'shakedown cruise' for your recipe.

Process 1 example: You have an amazing morel mushroom soup recipe. It works great in your home kitchen, and everybody loves it. You want to launch a small food business around this recipe. However, you need to learn a number of things about what happens when you scale your recipe up to small commercial batches. Will it meet your goals for quality? How much of the recipe ingredients will you supply? What ingredients will be purchased at what specifications and price? In short, what are the true costs of production for a small-scale commercial production run? This first process at the Innovation Kitchen is designed to answer those critical questions with you tasting and approving the results. This step also supplies critical documentation of real numbers and actual times required, not extrapolated results.

The idea is to make a small, smart investment in your emerging food enterprise to make sure the idea is scalable. Also important, this first Preparation Partner test run will give everyone involved a basis for pricing larger, commercial production runs if that is an option.

So, how is My Magnificent Morel Soup Mix doing? We rented time on the commercial dehydrator at the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen and got a batch of our morels just right for a dry mix. We purchased some ingredients from local farms. We bought a few ingredients and our packaging through the Innovation Kitchen's Purchasing partner program. The recipe scaled up to a small-scale commercial size. All costs were documented.

This matched the targets in our business plans, and we decided to move forward and prepare for commercial sale.

Process 2. Signing In. Most food products sold commercially must have their recipes and process approved prior to sale. (A good thing for all of us!) There are exceptions, but if you're going to run an artisan foods enterprise you need to think of yourself as a professional and run your enterprise accordingly. That includes going through legal registrations and all professionally relevant trainings and certifications.

The Innovation Kitchen has the support in place to help legally register food products and processes in Wisconsin. We will also have access to full information for selling your food products outside of Wisconsin. Additionally, the Innovation Kitchen 'Signing In' process makes available business help finding information about appropriately registering new business entities.

Process 2 example: With the help of the Innovation Kitchen, we submitted our Morel Mushroom soup recipe and processing steps. We included all three of the sizes we were intending to produce. We were approved within a few weeks. During that time we also incorporated a new enterprise around our business plans and registered with the appropriate state and federal agencies. We also did this with resources available through the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen.

Process 3. Launch services. Preparation Partners will have access to Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen marketing and sales networks, as well as storage and distribution networks.

Process 3 example: We test marketed our Magnificent Morel Mushroom Soup through the Innovation Kitchen marketing network and found the right mix of customers to start with. After processing our Magnificent Morel Mushroom Soup, the Innovation Kitchen stores our finished product. We send in orders for our soup, and the Innovation Kitchen ships them directly to our customers.

Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen Preparation Partners.

So, what's one of the easier and smarter ways to launch or grow an artisan food business? Outsource the testing, organization and food preparation to a state-inspected commercial kitchen that is set up to celebrate artisan foods.

All the difficult food regulation, management and execution steps will be done to code in a state-inspected commercial kitchen. You will have the opportunity to pre-test your recipe at a commercially relevant scale, document your costs, and market-test consumer demand.

Is this a guarantee of success? Of course not.

What the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen represents is a valuable opportunity for food lovers and food entrepreneurs to experiment with new food innovations and product lines in an affordable, valuable setting. A goal of the Innovation Kitchen is to help develop new and existing artisan food enterprises that celebrate healthy foods and our grow our rural communities.

Our Preparation Partners program is one of the ways we can make that happen. Got a recipe you'd like to try?

Stay tuned. I will report back as this emerges.

Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen link

Photo is of Hyde's Mill in beautiful Iowa County, Wisconsin.

Labels: artisan food processing, bootstrapping, business plans, entrepreneurship, innovation, Outsourcing, platforms, slow startups, startups, Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

I believe economic development means helping create opportunities.

Inventor and Entrepreneur Clubs are a really fun way to discuss and learn about opportunities for starting and growing enterprises of all kinds.

We have ours in Iowa County typically on the fourth Monday evening of each month. People get together to discuss, ask questions, and share strategies about entrepreneurship and doing enterprise. It's really fun to see new and old friends interact and help one another with business and startup ideas.

Each month different speakers focus on specific topics. In next week's meeting we'll have Maria Davis from one of our great local foods group REAP, and Lois Federman from her wonderful program Something Special From Wisconsin. Mark will speak directly to growers interested in producing vegetables for the Highland processing and freezing plant. I'll get to cover the possibilities for food entrepreneurship and business expansion available through our new Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen. Looks like a landscape of great opportunities to me.

Here is our press release for our next Iowa County Entrepreneur Club meeting. You can download a PDF version at the end.


Iowa County Entrepreneur Club meeting to focus on growing businesses and creating jobs in local foods and regional food processing.

Dodgeville, WI –

Start or grow your own business around the growing possibilities of local foods and regional food processing!

Local foods and regional food enterprises are blooming everywhere. This is becoming a great way to start or grow businesses in Southwest Wisconsin.

Join us at our next Entrepreneur Club meeting Wed., Feb. 24 in Dodgeville, WI. This meeting will specifically focus on the strong possibilities for food and agricultural entrepreneurship in our region, with four featured speakers:

Maria Davis from the REAP Food Group (Research, Education,
Action, and Policy) will discuss 'Buy Fresh Buy Local Southwest
Wisconsin' and the demand for local foods.

Lois Federman from Something Special From Wisconsin will
discuss the possibilities for working with farmers markets,
produce auctions, and Community Supported Agriculture
(CSA) programs.

Mark Olson from Renaissance Farm will discuss plans for the
Individual Quick Frozen (IQF) vegetable processing and
freezing facility planned for Highland. This section is meant to
give regional growers as much information as is available so
they can plan future farm activities with this facility in mind.

Rick Terrien from Iowa County Area Economic Development will
discuss business support available for area growers and farm-based
entrepreneurs. Rick will also discuss business startup and
expansion possibilities at the new community-access Wisconsin Innovation
Kitchen, a state-certified food processing facility available to growers and
food entrepreneurs, operated by the Hodan Center in Mineral Point.

Grow your own business around the growing possibilities of local foods and regional food processing!

Please join us for a great evening of information sharing at our next Iowa County Entrepreneur Club meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 24. There will be a social hour beginning at 5:30 and the meeting will begin at 6 PM. The location is at the Stonefield Apartments, 407 E. Madison St., Dodgeville WI. The event is free to the public. Bring a friend!

Download more information, agendas, location maps and much more at http://www.iowacountyedc.org.5100b.html

Networking among attendees will be encouraged in the evening's program. "Our goal is to grow the network of entrepreneurs and those that support them in the Iowa County area" said Rick Terrien, Executive Director of ICAEDC.

The Iowa County Area Entrepreneurs Club is an informational forum where entrepreneurs, inventors, existing businesses, new businesses and people thinking about starting their own businesses can come together to encourage each other and share challenges and encouragement. The group meets on a monthly basis, usually the fourth Wednesday of the month. More information about the group is available on the ICAEDC website at www.iowacountyedc.org/5100b.html or by emailing info@iowacountyedc.org

Download a meeting flyer for this meeting focusing on growing vegetables for the proposed Highland processing and freezing facility:
http://www.iowacountyedc.org/imagesb/ Meeting_Flyer_2_24_10.pdf

END.

If you're in the area please stop by!

Iowa County. Come grow with us.

Iowa County (WI) Area Entrepreneurs Club

REAP Food Group. Research, Education, Action and Policy on Food Group is building a regional food system that is healthful, just, and both environmentally and economically sustainable.

Something Special From Wisconsin. I believe Iowa County Economic Development is the first County EDC member in Wisconsin. I love this program.

Mark's Renaissance Farm. Who knew cinnamon rolls could become an addiction?

Download this media release in PDF format

Information about growing vegetables for the proposed Highland processing and freezing facility.

Labels: artisan food processing, entrepreneurship, innovation, Innovation Kitchen, new product development, platforms, slow money, slow startups, startups, Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

A new Business Week article - Ben Franklin Where Are You? - is about the United States falling behind in the global patent race.

The article in the Dec. 28, 2009 issue by Michael Arndt documents the fact that in 2009 for the first time non-Americans were granted more U.S. patents than resident inventors.

The body of the article focuses on the difficulties universities and high tech centers are facing in the patent race. However, the headline (celebrating Ben Franklin) highlights our history as independent innovators.

It's my opinion that this kind of citizen innovation and entrepreneurship is more alive and flourishing than I've ever seen in decades of work in the field. In fact I think the world is full of Ben Franklins, and that the age of the independent entrepreneur and inventor is just arriving.

I think a difference between an independent inventor and those in universities and corporate labs is that independent inventors work to solve very specific problems not create new technologies.

Dave and I didn't have any budget to launch or grow our company. We had values that were important to us and each of us had a skill set that built on the other person's strengths.

We also knew some really cool ways to solve some very specific problems. The fact that new technologies emerged from this and were taken through the intellectual property process was an afterthought.

The fact that the rest of the world is surpassing the United States in patents is a tribute to the value placed on ever increasing innovation by governments and societies worldwide. Much of the world seems to get it that continuous, sustainable innovation is the only way forward.

So, my favorite independent innovation story from the last startup Dave and I founded…

One of the world's leading satellite and space manufacturing firms, Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne, recently gutted their two satellite and space manufacturing plants in California and retrofitted them from the ground up with worldwide 'best of class' equipment. Their corporate mantra is: "Pure and simple, we are the best at what's new."

Rocketdyne chose to recycle their manufacturing fluids using inventions Dave and I created. We worked out these ideas far from corporate labs and universities.

It was my last major sale for our company. I really miss that work.

Thank you Pratt and Whitney! The fact that you chose our inventions as the 'best of what's new' for fluid recycling in 21st century space manufacturing is a lifelong honor for an independent inventor.

For those of you working in the trenches, let me say that there are big firms and important organizations looking for better ideas and ways to innovate. Even when you're doubting your own capability to execute or to reach those markets, press on. The world needs you, your ideas, and your work. Like Pratt & Whitney, keep working to be the best at what's new.

Happy Holidays 2009!


Photo courtesy of Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne. Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-110)

Business Week article, Ben Franklin Where Are you?. Online edition Dec. 17, 2009. Print edition Dec. 28th and Jan. 4th.

Our first patent (patent number 6,183,654). I wrote this patent and did the patent drawings. For our subsequent inventions, we turned this process over to our wonderful patent attorney Dr. Jaen Andrews - Thank you Dr. Jaen!

Labels: business partners, entrepreneurship, green tech, innovation, intellectual property, startups

My friend Mark Olson and I, with a scary-smart group of emerging friends, have been working out possibilities for our Iowa County initiative. This is an economic development prototype to build interrelated local food processing clusters, operated at a scale to meet institutional demand. These facilities will be located strategically across rural economies and organized in a way that is mutually self-supportive. The design of this system moves the bulk of the revenue through the management and production levels, delivering it to the producers and their communities. There is a link at the end to the summary white paper about this initiative that we presented at the Slow Money Institute in Madison this summer.

To me, creating experiments in all kinds of regional food systems is needed. This is a startup effort and startups are not straight-line endeavors. Stuff needs to get learned. Policies and procedures need to get worked out. That doesn't mean go slow. It means to hurry up. Let's make our mistakes early, often, and inexpensively. Our Iowa County / Driftless Foods initiative is a startup designed to to develop and document the knowledge needed take the next steps.

With that base in place, our goal is replication elsewhere: finding ways to deploy successful regional food systems models in other places and at bigger scales.

I had a great meeting this week with a nearby multi-state region of 10 to 15 counties. This may become an opportunity to replicate the Iowa County prototype in a larger, more diverse region sooner than later. I've got some great new friends across this area. I am not only confident, but flat-out excited that we could knit together a world-changing leadership team for this project. Our goal is to create a reproducible regional food system, this time at a bigger scale. The idea is that a successful multi-county (and especially multi-state) model would be one that could be replicated nationally in short order.

Of course, every area will have its own ag (and non ag) resources to contribute to these regional systems. However, I believe the process of organizing and deploying regional food systems is what's critical for making them successful and reproducible. That's at the heart of what is valuable here.

And, to walk-the-walk, I had a chance this week to say what I thought local food processing clusters most needed right now in response to a question from people who could make my answer happen. I had a chance to ask for a lot of money but (per last week's post) I actually said enabling legislation.

On first review I was sure I should have said money, mostly because it's likely true. However, if regional food systems are to be made replicable, they really need some meta support, like enabling legislation, that will give people working on local food initiatives some actual tools to help them move the discussion forward. We need to quit talking about this and take some action steps. We need to create opportunities, enable infrastructure, build markets, create jobs and jump start economic development by nurturing market demand and giving our entrepreneurs a stable platform to grow from.

I remember the early days of recycled paper. It was a good idea that everyone talked about but was stuck in kind of a niche market of early adopters. When the Wisconsin government decided to emphasize the use of recycled paper in its purchasing, that business took off and we've never looked back.

I would suggest that we don't need more requirements, but if the enabling legislation were to just say that opportunities to utilize locally grown and locally processed foods should be explored, it would be huge. The locally processed language would give permission and support to people within local institutions - schools, hospitals, etc. - to see what they can do with local foods. Their buying power will ultimately most enable the success of this process. I would not make these institutions buy locally grown and locally processed foods. I would make it easier for them to do.

If the enabling legislation just indicated that locally grown and locally processed foods were included as a recommendation, but not a requirement, many valuable interests could be served, bypassing potential battle lines.

So, a really wonderful week for local foods processing. Future's so bright… I gotta wear shades. Based on what we learned this week we're planning on ramping up the pace of the rollout of our Iowa County initiative.

As my friend Mark always signs off, be well.


Download PDF white paper on our local food processing initiative first presented to the Slow Money Institute gathering in Madison this summer.

A great interview with Salli Martyniak of Forward Community Investments and Wally Orzechowski of Southwest Wisconsin Community Action Program about community investing. Wally is a friend and is a leader in our team rolling out the Driftless Foods / Iowa County initiative. Salli is a new friend who leads one of the most valuable enterprises I've come across in any field, Forward Community Investments

An interview with Mark Olson about his wonderful Renaissance Farm and adding value to agriculture.

Labels: bootstrapping, business plans, entrepreneurship, innovation, new product development, open source economic development, platforms, slow money, slow startups, startups

First, a great day this week meeting with the Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, Mike Sheridan. The Speaker is on my left in the photo. On my right is my friend and our State Representative Steve Hilgenberg.

Next, I thoroughly enjoyed my presentation to the Wisconsin Economic Development Association gathering this past Monday.

The discussion at the end of these talks is always the best part. I was asked a long-standing question that is universal: Are entrepreneurs born or can they be made?

I took the obvious route and said yes.

Too easy. I also didn't get the answer right.

Entrepreneurs are not born or made. Entrepreneurs are enabled.

We can't make people do this stuff, but we certainly can make it easier for those that want to.

It's my opinion that we need better entrepreneurship infrastructure of all kinds. That's why I'm so excited about the almost endless possibilities for new business platforms that our Innovation Kitchen in Mineral Point will enable. Ditto for the local foods processing cluster we're designing and building across Iowa County and beyond. New platforms for creating value. Easier ways for people to know their farmers and food processors. Easier paths to value for all involved.

Entrepreneurs are not born or made. Entrepreneurs are enabled.

So, what does that mean in the trenches?

I learned a new term of art (for me anyway) that is one key tool for enabling entrepreneurs: enabling legislation. Enabling legislation isn't a tool like a hammer or a food processing plant. It's language used in law and regulation that helps something desirable happen.

I've got 3 words that I think could change economic development in rural areas dramatically. These three words could be inserted into (enabling) legislation so that it would create an outcome everyone wants. Such as enabling entrepreneurship and local foods.

In many states, including Wisconsin, there is legislation in the works that would guide institutional buying to build in a preference for locally grown food. I applaud that but I would insert my three words: a preference for locally grown and locally processed food.

You've seen this broken model in other business sectors… You produce a product. You ship it out of the region at low prices for value to be added. Then you buy your own stuff back at high prices. Haven't we heard this story long enough?

So, if you are a person out there who is working on local foods initiatives, think about adding one more layer to the equation. Include 'and locally processed' into your descriptions. Three simple words could lead to wonderful rural economic development possibilities. How anyone defines 'local' is up to them, of course, but there needn't be one answer. Different communities at local, state and regional levels can define what's right for them, and we can all have a good food experience figuring it out.

Creating appropriate scale economic infrastructure to support agriculture and rural economies benefits all people in a region. If regions are to prosper, rural communities must be included. Thriving rural economies support and enrich urban economies. Without both, regions stagnate.

We need to enable our local growers and food entrepreneurs a launch path to join the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food (KYF2) movement, sponsored by the White House (Thank you Mrs. Obama!) and the USDA.

We need to enable entrepreneurship of all flavors with as many tools as we can muster.

There is always economic chaos and we are entering an era of even faster change, but I'm a person who believes that, in general, humanity will continue to re-emerge into better lives with increasing value and dignity for continuously-increasing numbers of us.

Entrepreneurs are not born or made. Entrepreneurs are enabled.

You can do it. Wherever you are personally in this discussion, I urge you to enable and to be enabled by the possibilities of entrepreneurship. Let's go. The world needs you!



Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food (KYF2)

Labels: bootstrapping, entrepreneurship, innovation, slow startups, startups

I am really looking forward to a presentation I get to share with the Wisconsin Economic Development Association (WEDA) this coming Monday evening, Nov. 9. They have asked me to discuss opening a new economic development organization.

I am coming up on my first anniversary as an economic developer in rural Wisconsin.

On my first day on the job, Dec. 1, 2008, I was sitting in a vacant conference room in Dodgeville, WI. I had been shoveling info into a newly cloned database as fast as I could all day. I turned on the radio that evening as I set up to leave. I learned that a recession was officially declared to be underway. That day the Dow Jones fell almost 700 points, the 4th biggest drop in its history. To welcome me to my new gig, there was a whopper snowstorm clogging up all of the upper Midwest. Welcome to economic development.

For my talk on Monday I have limited expertise to share about economic development theory but I certainly can share what its like to take on this kind of opportunity as a working entrepreneur.

In short, there are deep and profound opportunities available in our rural and urban economies right now. What's needed now are small, measurable action steps. If we're to create a new and better economy we need to launch as many intelligent experiments as possible, learn from them, and repeat.

I'm convinced our Iowa County initiative is a valuable experiment in this mix. All around us there are big, amorphous, meta discussions underway about improving economic development. But that's all they typically are. Discussions.

Mark Olson and I had a wonderful meeting this week with a gentleman who helps lead USDA Rural Development in Wisconsin. He shared with us a really compelling story about his early work in community development that involved red lining in poor neighborhoods. Their team was most successful when they restricted their organizing and development efforts to a geographically limited footprint. When they did that, their efforts succeeded. They could impose timelines, measurement metrics and then get on with it. When problems arose, they had a manageable scope to deal with. When their peers and managers tried to design 'more efficient' experiments in larger geographic areas, valuable data was lost and the efforts to make things better inevitably failed.

That's why I'm so pumped up about this county scale experiment Mark and I are working on. If it leaks into neighboring counties as we roll it out, all the better. Regions should be knit together by this kind of work.

What's valuable is that we will have a geography in which real experiments can be run and real meaning can be extracted. I want something that works and that's reproducible.

If something like this can't be made to work in one county, it can't be made to work in 5 or 20 or 72 counties. We're preparing a small, smart action step to help take those first steps.

Let the studies follow (informed) action. I want to make well-reasoned, inexpensive mistakes and learn. One foot in front of the other stuff, but for goodness sake, let's do something. Let's put economic development in service to the people who need it, not those who just want to talk about it.

I am very impressed by the potential for USDA Rural Development in Wisconsin to make a national impact. Their interest in our experiment is exciting.




USDA Rural Development, Wisconsin

I made new friends this week who work with Forward Community Investments. This is a wonderful organization that works with nonprofits in Wisconsin to help them make strategic financial decisions and build their financial capacity for greater success. They are holding a cool looking community investing conference on November 19th, in Madison.

I've also made new friends in the Austin, TX area bootstrapping group. I am delighted to be included in their doings. If you are in the Austin area there is a good looking gathering on Monday evening 11/9.

Labels: bootstrapping, business plans, entrepreneurship, innovation, open source economic development, slow money, startups

The economy is rebuilding, but I don't know anyone who feels relaxed about their future economic security.

People want to put some stability and meaning back into their economic lives. There are certainly many paths to get there.

I've been writing about slow startups as a viable path for creating smart new enterprises that can make significant financial and cultural improvements in people's lives.

We've got slow food, and now slow money. Why not slow startups? Everyone wants viable new solutions and the emerging model is competence and sustainability, not speed.

Just as there is great honor in slow foods and what that idea brings to commerce, there is also great honor and long-term value in creating slow enterprise models.

We need to make entrepreneurship simpler and more accessible. We need to nurture entrepreneurship that builds and sustains our communities and our regions. We need to help people create and build their own enterprises in ways that fit into their lives appropriately.

Slow startups take into account whatever your personal and financial status is. This model allows you to build and test your own enterprise at your own pace, so that in the end you will have a service or a product that you're passionate about and a sustainable business model supporting it.

Slow startups certainly match up well with my own boomer demographic. I also think these kind of slow launches will fit in well with the wonderful artisinal young people doing so many cool things out there. And if you're in the middle, what's wrong with trying to create a long-term job for yourself by slowly starting your own business now?

So, here's my news: Most startups take far longer than the people think. This is especially true for small, self-funded startups. That's not a bad thing, it just is. What this should be saying to you is to start creating your own small business ASAP. It will take longer than you think to get underway. Start one while you have a day job. Start one in your spare time. I know, this is not easy, but the time is there. Find what time you can and put it to work.

By taking the process slowly, you will learn far more than by rushing through it. You will learn to enjoy the journey.

If you REALLY love this process after trying it out, you can circle back and do startups over and over - a perfectly viable and compelling career path in the 21st century.

In trying to help some new enterprises through our economic development office, I've been re-using the Micro-Enterprise courses I wrote and taught through the Small Business Center at WCTC in Waukesha. It's my slow startup manual.

Slow startups perfectly suit micro-enterprise and vice versa.

What do I really mean? I mean you can invest a few hundred dollars and a year or two of part time effort and come out the other end with a viable enterprise that's making money and building greater security and independence into your life. From there you can nurture and grow it in any direction you want.

If you have more time and money to invest, you can shorten your timeline to launch. This also makes it possible to make expensive mistakes. Careful.

So, start now. Start slow. Take some time to think about this and explore the possibilities. Here is my outline:

Slow startups. What to do first.

There are six fairly simple, but critically important steps to launching a slow startup. These make slow startups sustainable:

- Get a realistic understanding of what it takes to wake up an idea, as well as the risks and rewards of entrepreneurship and how to plan for both.

- Learn what information you'll need, how to find it, and how to use that information once you find it.

- Learn how become a professional at what you do, and where to turn for help.

- Create a management structure that builds your own confidence, deals with the details, and creates peace of mind for all involved.

- Learn how to market and sell in your niche.

- Learn to capture your data and turn it into commerce.

These six approaches to slow startups were the core of the six courses I wrote and taught through the Small Business Center.

They are my roadmap for creating slow startup enterprises. Each one of these topics unfolded into a 90+ minute discussion in my Micro-Enterprise courses when we dug into all the how-to stuff. There are multiple, discreet steps behind each of these major categories. I really loved sharing these ideas in depth.

I want you to know that it's not complicated. It just takes time. Take informed, measured steps. Develop mastery in small valuable steps. Make as many inexpensive mistakes as you can as quickly as you can. Execute. Innovate. Repeat.

It is not hard, but it does take time. Slow startups. Start one now and you'll thank yourself down the road.

As Tom Peters says, "Everyone has a chance to learn, improve, and build up their skills. Everyone has a chance to be a brand worthy of remark."

This is the Renaissance Age of entrepreneurship, and its just beginning.

Welcome friend. Now get going.


Tom Peters site

Labels: boomers, bootstrapping, business plans, entrepreneurship, innovation, new product development, slow money, startups, The slow start up movement

I'm really looking forward to speaking at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture in Ames, Iowa next Wednesday, Sept. 30.

This will be at a meeting of their Regional Food Systems Working Group, which is a program of the Iowa Value Chain Partnerships initiative sponsored by The Leopold Center. Very cool work. Links below.

I need their help and can't wait to discuss our Iowa County initiative to create a local food-processing cluster.

The biggest issues we are coming across in launching this food-processing cluster are governance related. This will be a wonky subject to some, but the issue is critical. We need new organizational structures to match market opportunities and community economic development needs.

In my opinion the experiments we most need to create should be designed to test alternative business governance structures. We need to take existing and emerging governance tools and mix them up into new platforms for doing enterprise creation and economic development.

I believe we need to experiment with new combinations of entity types. We've got LLCs, cooperatives, S-Corps, partnerships of all flavors, and now even L3Cs. It used to be that you had to pick one entity style and run with it. I think there are a lot of possibilities for doing great development work by creating projects with multiple governance types set up in advance that work in service to one another. Combining the strengths of different types of governance creates many unique tools for creating successful economic development as I see it.

For instance, I'm now helping run a non-profit (or social profit enterprise as my daughter E would say). If I were to advise someone about starting a non-profit I would have them look into organizing legally as a standard 501(c)3 (or (c)6) but having the attorney embed a for-profit LLC within that non-profit structure when it is created. This way you can operate the mission as chartered, but you embed a workable funding source from the outset.

It is always cheaper and easier to put these designs into play at from the outset, especially when outside investors and financial stakeholders are involved. Yes, structures can always be changed later, but it can be complicated, expensive and time-consuming.

That's why we have worked on the forms of governance for the Iowa County food processing cluster so carefully. We want to design and execute a successful experiment that can be reproduced and improved on.

We had only considered cooperative governance at the beginning for a number of reasons, but co-ops have their limitations, just like every other form of governance.

What I seem to be learning in the food cluster is the same lesson I found in my non-profit world: there is a great need for experimenting with governance tools to produce hybrid structures that can work efficiently in this new market. You need to create enterprises that make a profit and are sustainable. You need a way to fit this entity into the world of private and public investors and align everyone's expectations with the community and economic development goals of that entity from the outset.

So, we continue to explore all of these paths. I had a great meeting this week at Isthmus Engineering in Madison, which is organized as a unique form of cooperative. They do some of the coolest design and production work I've ever seen. Check out the YouTube video on their home page linked below.

At this meeting also I got to meet Melissa Hoover who is the Executive Director of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives. I learned a great deal about challenges facing new enterprises and alternate forms of governance nationwide. Melissa is a really nice person and a wonderful business resource.

I'm convinced the next thing needed for regional economic development are experiments of all kinds in non-traditional and hybrid forms of enterprise governance. Then when those experiments are run and proven effective, their structures can be reproduced inexpensively.

That's what economic developers and funders of all kinds should put some attention into. Right now it's hard and complicated for individual economic developers and entrepreneurs to create these structures. It shouldn't be. Let's do the experiments. Let's find what works. Let's discover which paths are reproducible. Then we can make our results - especially the design of successful hybrid governance models - available to others at a price and hassle-factor they can afford.

Ready access to inexpensive, reproducible hybrid governance structures is a vital, missing piece for regional economic development. I am thrilled to be able to help design experiments with this goal as the object of the work.

Yes, a wonky topic, but I can't think of anything more needed in the world of sustainable economic development right now.

With the help of great new friends I'm convinced our Iowa County initiative can make a lasting contribution to the field of regional economic development and building better regional food systems.

Makes me hungry.

Aldo Leopold Institute for Sustainable Agriculture. Regional Food Systems Working Group

Isthmus Engineering

United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives

Introduction to L3C governance. Short introduction to Low-Profit Limited Liability Companies. Our newest entity form, now emerging state by state.

Labels: bootstrapping, business plans, entrepreneurship, innovation, new product development, open source economic development, startups, The slow start up movement

Here in Wisconsin there is great interest in creating publicly available kitchen space to help small, local food enterprises come to life and grow. The short hand term for these efforts is 'kitchen incubators'. The model is that you can rent a state certified (expensive!) kitchen for a modest hourly rate and grow your own food business.

In our area, safety requires that foods produced for public sale need to be processed and packaged in a state inspected facility. Frankly this is a critical marketing benefit to be state certified. These inspections are probably required in most states, but I have not had the time to research.

The idea is to utilize public and private funds as available to create public shared-use kitchens as tools to enable local farmers, food enthusiasts, and food lovers of all kinds to become entrepreneurs.

I believe this idea will work for all kinds of locations. I see a very special place for this work in rural economic development where I spend my time.

I'm wrapped up in this subject at the moment. We have a public shared-use kitchen (kitchen incubator) opening in Iowa County early next year. It will be owned and operated by The Hodan Center, a wonderful enterprise celebrating and enriching the lives of people with disabilities. I am working with the Hodan Center on creating a public shared-use kitchen platform, available to the public when not used by Hodan activities.

I grew up with entrepreneurs, and I've been a working entrepreneur for 35 years. I honestly don't think I've ever seen a bigger, better or easier opportunity to explore entrepreneurship than in what I'm seeing now.

The Slow Money folks refer to these businesses as Small Food Enterprises (SFEs).

I dearly love this idea, but I don't think the phrase 'kitchen incubator' does this movement justice. The possibilities are much bigger and much more profound.

'Innovation Kitchen' is my term of art that embraces the new entrepreneurship possibilities of food. I am fully enchanted with what can happen from these kinds of platforms.

Creating a kitchen is not enough. Creating a network is what is needed. We are calling our new platform 'The Wisconsin Food Innovation Network', or, the Innovation Kitchen' for short.

In our area, we are all indebted to Mary Pat Carlson of the Farm Market Kitchen in Algoma, WI (linked below). Mary Pat pioneered this concept in Wisconsin and is making it work. Mary Pat is generously helping those of us with new kitchens in the planning and building stages understand what's required for these to succeed.

What excites me so much about this idea is that is speaks so clearly to the almost endless possibilities for entrepreneurship these certified kitchen platforms provide.

I've been saying for a long time that this is the Renaissance Age of entrepreneurship and that it's just beginning. I believe our Innovation Kitchen can become a model for enabling all kinds of economies, but the economic development benefits can be especially transformational for rural and agricultural regions.

Our new Wisconsin Food Innovation Network will focus on creating a sustainable platform for creating and growing food-based enterprises. I see the network aspect of this as creating, in advance, relationships for the kitchen with buyers, vendors, professional advisers, and entrepreneurship assets.

The Wisconsin Food Innovation Network will open its Innovation Kitchen in Mineral Point, WI in early 2010. We are planning the public-use protocols with the idea of learning what is most sustainable and reproducible over time and in other locations.

I'll be dedicating our first Iowa County Entrepreneur and Inventor Club meeting to a wide ranging discussion of the kitchen with Hodan staff available for questions. That meeting will be Wednesday, Sept. 23 in Dodgeville, WI at the Stonefield Apartments. Doors open at 5:30 PM. Meeting starts at 6.

I have focused these posts recently on our work to help create our Iowa County Initiative, Driftless Foods. This is designed to create a planned system for a local-foods processing cluster in a discreet region. The Innovation Kitchen fits this project hand in glove. It is my belief that over time, some entrepreneurs working from the Innovation Kitchen will 'graduate' into bigger revenue roles and need bigger processing and support capabilities. We will have that infrastructure waiting for them with Driftless Foods.

The time has come to roll this out big time. I am SO looking forward to working with and supporting the Hodan Center and the Wisconsin Food Innovation Network.

I will use this space to report back on what worked, what didn't, and (oh my!) all those possibilities….


The Hodan Center

The Farm Market Kitchen

Labels: boomers, bootstrapping, business plans, entrepreneurship, innovation, new product development, slow money, startups, The slow start up movement

Mark and I got to talk with a wonderful group at a meeting last week in Chicago. It was a gathering of the Good Food Network of the Upper Midwest.

I got to reconnect with friends and meet people I'd only known through email. There was a wide-ranging discussion about our local food processing proposals. People in the room included universities, foundations, research institutions, food sales and distribution firms, and funding collaboratives representing local governments and large public institutional food buyers.

It was flat-out invigorating to participate. The very best parts of the discussion were the ones that pushed us hardest to justify the concept and details of our local foods processing project.

The give and take was really great. Mark and I got to disagree with each other on new stuff right in front of them. It was like doing the most fun parts of a startup in front of a live audience. I love my job.

These good folks are in a national conversation sponsored by the National Good Food Network (NGFN). This arises from the Wallace Center and Winrock International, which are all linked below.

Here is a short introduction to the NGFN: "The National Good Food Network is bringing together people from all parts of the rapidly emerging good food system – producers, buyers, distributors, advocates, investors and funders – to create a community dedicated to scaling up good food sourcing and access."

"The challenge presented by the food system is our opportunity—to revolutionize business models, develop new market relationships, and add value to traditional supply chain infrastructure, so that the growing business of good food is sown in the values of good food – all the way from farm to fork."

This was very interesting to me to be included in this larger national conversation about revolutionizing business models to meet clear market challenges. These are significant players, all well connected into the agriculture and food industries, and they are nurturing and inspiring change, not running from it. My kind of meeting. My kind of people.

As we roll out the Dirftless Foods / Iowa County Initiative, we're down to a few key details as I see it. We have a choice of doing this with largely private money or focusing on government grants. A hybrid model is likely and the implications of that decision will keenly influence the legal structure the project adopts.

Seeing how the Good Food Network is reaching across many traditionally closed boundaries to create new conversations about change and effectiveness, I feel much more confident about helping build a hybrid business model for our local foods processing facilities. They are after results not more discussion. That's what I want for this project: long-lasting, high quality results that benefit all stakeholders.

Our ideas for community sponsored development fit well into this model of a hybrid organization. We are designing a model to attract the investment from local investors and local groups, regional governments, as well as regional and national enterprises both public and private.

As the GFN says of themselves, "The National Good Food Network represents practitioners across the value chain building a new food system that rewards sustainable production, treats growers and workers fairly, improves the health of families and the wealth of communities, and meets the growing demand for healthy, green, fair, affordable food."

Sign me up. Let's get this done.

Many thanks to the Good Food Network of the Upper Midwest for a really illuminating introduction to their work and, best of all, a new way of looking at mine.



National Good Food Network

The Wallace Center

Short biography of Henry Wallace

Labels: business plans, Driftless Foods, entrepreneurship, funding, innovation, new product development, regional fair trade

When Woody Tasch from Slow Money came to town last week I was startled to hear him respectfully and with gratitude reference the book Small is Beautiful.

I'd read Slow Money and was struck by the possibilities but hadn't connected the work to E. F. Schumacher and his great book, "Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered."

But this is a natural 21st century marriage. Efficient, market-driven financial discipline, with sustainable goals and methods, (Slow Money) meets smart, appropriate-scale technologies, in this case taking the form of local foods and sustainable agriculture.

What a magic time for this combination to occur. Demand is off the chart for local foods. Production and processing techniques are faster, smarter, cheaper. Tools for design, organizing, marketing, sales and distribution have never been better or less expensive. I'm back to the fact that this is indeed the Renaissance age of entrepreneurship, and it's just beginning.

Food is an issue whose time has come. There is a wonderful quote from Wisconsin's own Aldo Leopold in his Sand County Almanac that ties in here. Think about the following Leopold quote in terms of sustainable agriculture, local processing, local foods and healthy, more compelling communities; "By and large our present problem is one of attitudes and implements. We are remodeling the Alhambra with a steam-shovel, and are proud of our yardage. We shall hardly relinquish the shovel, which after all has many good points, but we are in need of gentler and more objective criteria for its successful use."

Free markets have nurtured the greatest freedoms in human history, but we need to apply those tools in less destructive, more successful ways especially in the way we feed and nurture ourselves and the place we live.

As a group of us works to design an efficient, reproducible local foods processing system with our Driftless Foods, Iowa County initiative, none of us are taking anything as gospel. Small is beautiful not because it sounds good as a theory on paper but because technology has evolved small, smart, nimble processing equipment that makes better use of resources and produces higher, more sustainable profits. That's why small is beautiful. Schumacher was [is!] right.

Small is a matter of perspective certainly. The multiple local foods processing plants we are designing to work in a self-supportive coalition, are not garden sheds. They will take a lot of money by anyone's standards. They will be technologically and environmentally brilliant. Small? No, compared to farmyard vegetable stands. Yes, compared to the Wall Street backed food system now falling apart.

One of my favorite Schumacher quotes sums up what a new local foods processing system might look like: "The aim ought to be to obtain the maximum amount of well being with the minimum amount of consumption." That is, an ultra lean, wise production system that creates great multi-generational jobs for a community, passing the bulk of the profits into a pool that all contributors are compensated from equitably.

I'm going to post the first Driftless Foods Cooperative white paper that we produced by separate headline following this. It's a short overview of the project.

Small is beautiful because it is smart, sustainable and profitable. Above all else small is valuable because it is reproducible .

In economic terms, that's a beautiful thing.



The E.F. Schumacher Society

Small is Beautiful. Wikipedia

The Aldo Leopold Foundation

Aldo Leopold. Wikipedia

The Aldo Leopold quote in this post is from the dedications page of the 25th Anniversary edition of Small is Beautiful.

Labels: boomers, bootstrapping, entrepreneurship, green tech, innovation, regional fair trade, slow money, startups, The slow start up movement

Today marks the 4th anniversary of these posts. I see this activity as a mental health outlet. And it's clearly practice. I enjoy the subject of sustainable enterprise and sustainable work and want to write and talk more about it.

Remember, sustainable doesn't mean you save the whales first. Sustainable means keeping you and your enterprise going. You make real progress. You grow. You get more competent and independent. You keep excellent books. You capture data professionally. Your enterprise grows in value in every way. If you crash and burn, both you and the whales are toast. That is what I mean by sustainable.

To be sustainable, that is to grow and build value, requires competence. It does not require star quality entrepreneur mojo.

I read a great piece in the April 13 Business Week by Robert Sutton, a professor of management science and engineering at Stanford.

The article is titled, "In Praise of Simple Competence".

The basis of this is the Peter Principle, the idea that people are promoted until they run out of skills to accomplish the growing amount and complexity of tasks we ask of them. Then we all have to live with their incompetence.

As Mr. Sutton writes, "If Dr. Peter (The Peter Principle) were alive today, he'd find that a new lust for superhuman accomplishments has helped create an almost unprecedented level of incompetence. The message has been this: Perform extraordinary feats or consider yourself a loser. We are now struggling to stay afloat in a river of snake oil created by this way of thinking."

The thing I've learned to do that might be the most valuable contribution I can make to someone thinking about their own startup is to give them permission. You can do this. Surely you need competence, but that's all. You do not need to reach for the unattainable. You can build a successful, growing, sustainable enterprise. If you are realistic, your enterprise can be one that matches your needs and your timeline.

With small businesses and startups, remember to fail early and often. That's not permission. That's an order. I've said this forever, and I continue to prove it myself every day. You will fail. Do so cheaply, non-catastrophically, and learn from every one.

This is my bedrock foundation for approaching enterprise. You can do it. You will make mistakes and not get it right. It will likely take longer than you think. Go forward and scramble.

In support of this two great quotes: the first from my favorite business sage, Tom Peters, the second from Arthur Lefler, current CEO of Proctor and Gamble.

"Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast." - Tom Peters

"You learn more from failure than you do from success but the key is to fail early, fail cheaply, and don't make the same mistake twice." - Proctor and Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley (story link below).

It's fun when really smart people back up what you know to be as true as anything that exists in the world of enterprise.

This is the solution. Simple competence. It is not the ability to avoid mistakes but to live with them, to keep their damage manageable and their lessons valuable.

I'd wanted to start writing about this stuff long ago but was always afraid I wouldn't be good enough or that it wouldn't instantly get to the New York Times' best seller list.

Then it hit me one night, sitting in a hotel room in Dubuque, Iowa. I couldn't do one more thing that day. I was dead tired and covered in oil and fatigue from the startup of one of our industrial fluid recyclers at the local John Deere plant.

I decided to write down a couple of ideas that I'd learned that day about what I wanted to do with my life. It didn't have to be on the best seller list. It needed to be a competent presentation of what I know to be true about doing enterprise. Good enough. An action step.

That was four years ago today. Still practicing. Still touting the joys of simple competence and inviting you into the world of sustainable work.

C'mon along for the next four years. I see a LOT of interesting work on the horizon.



In Praise of Simple Competence. Business week article by Bob Sutton. April 13, 2009. Online version titled "the Peter Principle Still Lives.


How P&G Plans to Clean Up Business Week April 13, 2009.

Tom Peters

First post and mission statement April 12, 2005

Labels: bootstrapping, business plans, entrepreneurship, First post and mission, innovation, startups, The slow start up movement

The March 2009 Inc. magazine has a good piece by entrepreneur Joel Spolsky. I like Mr. Spolsky's work because he's a working entrepreneur and freely admits to the ups and downs and all the indecision in between.

His column is titled Start-up Static. "A new business is like a shortwave radio. You have to fiddle patiently with all the dials until you get the reception you want."

That advice has never been more true than in this rapidly changing economy. Small startups are not a rigid exercise in business planning. They are a dance of details. You need to continue to tweak, to adjust the dials, always searching for a way to make the signals stronger and your enterprise more sustainable. Anyone who tells you differently has never started up a small enterprise.

What's between the lines of this story is that you can do it too. There is no wisdom handed down from on high to those who start businesses. They are just people who have (hopefully) assessed their chances and continue to put one foot in front of the other in a way that's informed by the details of the path they are on.

In the same article Mr. Spolsky quotes Jessica Graham of Y Combinator, one of my all time favorite startup stories. Y Combinator is an investment firm / training camp / startup mentoring and empowerment platform dedicated to very small tech startups. I won't do it justice here. See the link at the end to learn more.

When asked to do a presentation, it was suggested to Jessica Graham that she might talk about why startups fail, not the usual stuff about why they would succeed.

"That would be boring, " she said. "They all fail for the same reason. People just stop working on their business."

The article continues: "As she pointed out, it's usually a collapse of motivation - everyone wanders back to civilian life. And the startup ends, not with a bang, but a whimper."

The Grahams have seen a lot and do a great deal of good for startups. They focus their energies and help on companies they have skills in (tech startups). As investors, Y Combinator puts in tiny amounts of money (almost always less than $20,000), but they also provide financial support and stability for entrepreneurs training in their highly effective startup programs.

This is a great model that can be reproduced in other fields. New entrepreneurs need small-ball money; but more importantly, they need safe cultural and financial spaces to take cover in while they launch, under the careful eyes of folks who have a stake in their success.

Why not a reproduce the Y Combinator model for firms that focus on green entrepreneurship? What about food entrepreneurs or art entrepreneurs or social entrepreneurs, and on and on? Little bits of money and lots of training, love and attention from people skilled in those arts. That's what the world of startups needs most, and the Grahams have provided a robust, reproducible model that can work in most any area of commerce we would like to develop for our regions and entire societies.

We need new forms of partnerships in the world to support this launch stage among entrepreneurs.

Perhaps we should consider calling these bare-bones startup evangelists 'Launch Directors'. Wouldn't it be cool to have Launch Directors available regionally, so that good folks emerging from the many wonderful business training programs could actually get help taking the subsequent action steps.

This is the stage where Jessica Graham from Y Combinator says, "They all fail for the same reason… everyone wanders back to civilian life."

I think that some form of public-private alliance will emerge, perhaps with the public portion supplying the bare-bones walls and roofs of the traditional incubators plus the connectivity of virtual incubators.

I think the private part of that alliance will emerge to supply the money. Not the old style slash and burn venture style investing but a 'slow money' style of investing promoted by former venture investor Woody Tasch. As Mr. Tasch puts it: "This is a call to action, a call to design new capital markets built not around extraction and consumption, but around preservation and restoration. The vision: billions of dollars a year supporting tens of thousands of independent, local-first enterprises at the base of the restorative economy."

I get to make a presentation to the Wisconsin Assembly Committee on Rural Economic Development this week. Later in the month I am honored to be able to speak at several annual meetings of groups of local focused folks in my area, most of whom have been entrepreneurs and activists of some form or another in their lives.

I'm going to talk to all of these groups about the need for new types of incubators with public-private action steps built in.

Society needs entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs need society's support. Our job in economic development is to arrange that marriage, teach them to dance, and to empower them to enjoy and learn from their honeymoon journey.

If entrepreneurs can break through that stage, the world that finances emerging companies can take over, and we, as economic developers, can circle back to create more seed stage, local opportunities.

The world needs better startups. You need a sustainable enterprise. Now is the time to create new ways to make this happen.



Inc. Magazine article How Hard Could It Be? Start-up Static by Joel Spolsky

Y Combinator home page

About Y Combinator

Link to the Slow Money Alliance

Announcement, this Tuesday's presentation to the Wisconsin Assembly Committee on Rural Economic Development

Labels: bootstrapping, business plans, entrepreneurship, funding, innovation, new product development, platforms, startups, The slow start up movement

Buckminster Fuller wrote about doing increasingly more with increasingly less for the greatest number of people at an accelerating pace. Look around. Sounds like a plan.

The only way to succeed is to find ways to make increasingly sustainable tomorrows.

We innovate our way into the future in sustainable ways, or we fail. Period.

Peter Drucker said "Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth."

Now that I get to work directly in economic development, that's my job. I see it as an act of respecting resources, empowering people and communities, and building economic independence for the greatest number of people in the most sustainable way.

So what does the sustainable part mean? In Thomas Friedman's new book he concludes, "Green isn't about lighting up our homes. It's about lighting up our future."

Lighting up ALL our futures.

To me this means making tools, information, and sustainable business processes available to anyone who wants to contribute solutions. I see huge numbers of emerging entrepreneurs and innovators searching out real problems, large and small, and working to supply increasingly sustainable, repeatable solutions. We need to make the process easier for them to navigate.

Peter Drucker speaks about creating new capacities to create wealth. Wealth in the emerging economy will mean a growing quality of life, better environments, and more control over your own, personal economic independence, and the economic independence of your communities.

Increasingly sustainable tomorrows.

Sounds like a plan.


The Buckminster Fuller Institute

Peter Drucker via Wikipedia

Labels: bootstrapping, business plans, entrepreneurship, innovation, new product development, startups

The Economic Development Director of Racine County, WI is Gordon Kacala. Gordon and I have not met, but I'm an admirer of his work and his writing.

I buy the Racine Journal Times whenever I'm in Racine, which is fairly often. I love newspapers, but my specific reason is to read Gordon Kacala's column in the Journal Times called 'Developing Racine'.

In a recent column I really liked, Gordon wrote about one of my favorite economic development subjects, manufacturing. Specifically his column talked about ways to define 'next generation' manufacturing.

The definitions Gordon pointed at have been proposed by our own Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension Partnership. I think these are a great first effort. I also think they are generally applicable to all kinds of economic development issues.

This evolving definition for 'next generation' enterprise has five main characteristics called out. I'm going to take each point and apply it to business development generally.

- Your enterprise embraces systemic, continuous improvement

ME: For startups and small businesses, this does not have to
mean biotech patents. It can mean sending invoices faster or storing phone numbers in the right place, or checking credit better. You do not need to be a rocket scientist to continuously improve your operations and the solutions you offer. However, you do need to do both all the time.

- Your enterprise is globally engaged

ME: There is micro-economic and a macro-economic comment to be made, given current circumstances.

The big global stuff is fun, and it's never been more available to small businesses. In both of my last enterprises, we had customers on 5 continents. I sold recycling equipment in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas from my virtual office in Madison, Wisconsin. However going global is not the first step that most startups must learn to take. We took those global steps only after we learned to walk regionally and nationally.

I am not going to dismiss purely local commerce, but it can be very limiting and potentially lethal for most small enterprises.

For most enterprise their first markets need to be regional. It spreads the risk, it increases the universe of customers and it offers the potential for implementing your solutions at lower costs.

After that, when appropriate, you should then learn to market yourself nationally. Setting up a small enterprise that rejects the potential for selling across the United States is naive and wrong headed. When appropriate, marketing small businesses throughout the US has never been easier or less expensive.

After that, go global with my blessings. It can be rewarding and very profitable if you're ready.

- Your enterprise has active strategies to attract, develop and retain the talent necessary to win in a next-generation world.

ME: For the smallest businesses this means training yourself to learn the skills and tools needed to cowboy up commercially in the 21st century. This is not only the digital stuff, but the people skills needed to equitably do commerce going forward. Attracting and developing talent for small business can mean employees, but also increasingly means growing and retaining talented strategic market partners.

For existing small businesses, I would also suggest that the big picture needs adjusting. I mean that we all need to advocate for a system that takes health care out of the list of risks we face when starting and running enterprises. Without that, we can not compete for, or retain talent. The talent we need won't be available because those talented people can't risk their insurance status. The people who small businesses most need, (and I think the same people who most need small business), have to balance their family's risks with every decision as you do. We need to fix health care to fix economic development. Period.

- Your enterprise incorporates green ideas in its growth and operating strategies as a means to reduce waste and take advantage of the growing demand for sustainable products.

ME: I have seen the most egregious BS attached to the green movement, and I have also marketed hard right into it with great success. The test of sustainable green commerce is not a complicated one; it needs to fix real problems and it needs to make money.

There has been a sea change recently that will drive this movement forward. Green has become a national security issue.

As a sustainable path into the future, I have never seen so
much market wind at the back of green commerce

Need a definition of green commerce? I recently saw a great quote by Nobel Prize-wining physist Murray Gell-Mann defining sustainable as, "living off nature's income rather than it's principal".

Your community and the entire world want more sustainable products and services. There has never been more potential for ground-up, sustainable entrepreneurship in my lifetime.

- Your enterprise is skilled in strategic partner and supplier relationship management as a means to increase production flexibility, use partner competencies, and tap new markets.


ME: For small businesses, this translates as setting up equitable, transparent, mutually beneficial food chains with your commercial partners and customers. This is the most profitable model in the long run, and also the easiest to operate. Simple is good.


What we've seen in the economic meltdown this summer is that complicated, opaque commercial systems are almost impossible to manage and master, and in most case lead to disaster.

Next Generation business development will require the positions suggested above: continuous innovation, a regional and national market focus, your approach to all people is one of equality, your approach to commerce sustainably fixes problems, and you develop the ability to work cooperatively and equitably with all your commercial stakeholders.


Sustainable = repeatable. This 'Next Generation' model highlights that approach. Anyone can do this. I believe everyone should start and grow their own enterprises along these principles.

There has never been a more important time to to do so for yourself and for our economy going forward.




Thanks to Gordon Kacala for his good work and good writing on behalf of Racine County. Visit the Racine County Economic Development site

Visit the Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension Partnership site discussing Next Generation Manufacturing

Labels: bootstrapping, business partners, entrepreneurship, innovation, startups, The slow start up movement

I was honored to be asked to lead a panel discussion about innovation and invention at the next meeting of the Green County WI Entrepreneurs and Inventors Club.

This is an especially vibrant E&I Club. The panelists work from a wide variety of interesting and creative parts of the economy.

The meeting is Monday July 7, 2008 from 6:30 to 8:30 PM. The location is the Monroe Clinic in their New Glarus Room. 515 22nd Av. Monroe, WI

Come early and have a Limburger sandwich at Baumgartners on the Monroe square. Monroe is one of my favorite WI cities and you just can't beat the environment and the economic potential of this great location.

If you have an interest in learning more, please send me an eMail

Labels: entrepreneurship, innovation, intellectual property, new product development, The slow start up movement

Today we had the biggest one day jump in oil prices in history. A couple of big economists at major banks predicted $150 or $200 per barrel oil this year.

Is this the end of the world? Of course not. Some Europeans are coming here to take driving vacations because energy is so cheap.

Is it the end of the road for inefficient, wasteful, energy intensive commerce? Yes, thankfully.

In my last startup I skimmed & recycled industrial fluids. I saw millions of gallons of oil going to waste. The industries I worked in called that oil a contaminant or pollution. They were paying to have oil hauled away. Oil. Honestly. I'm talking this century.

Long ago Buckminster Fuller said pollution is resources in the wrong places. If he knew how dysfunctional the transition would be, I'm sure he would have been shocked.

I used to give talks around the country, mostly in industrial settings. I loved speaking at the yearly industry conventions and professional education seminars for our industries.

I had to travel on the night of Sept. 11, 2001. I was giving a talk in Cleveland the next day for some of the heaviest hitters in my business. It was an awful drive. My society was seizing up. There were people waving flags on almost every bridge across 4 states. There were reports of Indiana Troopers seizing gas stations in Gary, IN for hoarding fuel as I drove past wondering where I could find the next open gas station. Weird, scary times.

During the seminar the next day, we were all politically numb but a new economic reality was in the air. The focus of every discussion was the need to protect our exposures - as a nation, as states, as industries, and as individuals.

Every single day since 9/11 more and more people have equated the idea of increasing efficiencies and cutting energy use as a way of decreasing exposures of all kinds.

Today - especially today - you can't escape the tidal wave of public support/demand behind getting all areas of our culture greener and more sustainable.

My point for this post is as follows: Think of energy use as a 'sin tax'. Something that costs you dearly for your guilty little pleasures. You'll pay more because you just gotta have it…..

Sure the revenues may not be going directly to the government as true taxes, but the money is flying out of your world as lost, not as a productive investment. You've got exposure. You're going to pay. Fix the exposure and you become safer, more productive, and more sustainable.

The idea of 'we just gotta keep to our old ways' is NOT inevitable. Good design can reduce the 'gotta'. Thoughtful, sustainable practices reduce the 'gotta'. Day by day, you reduce the 'gotta'. Day by day you get stronger, more efficient, and less exposed as an organization.

If you are an entrepreneur, or if you are an entrepreneurial company, this is a time of great opportunity to help.

I know the industrial world the best. The way we manufacture things, the way manufacturing energy is expended, the way manufacturing fluids are spent, the way manufacturing affects air quality and the overall effects of manufacturing on carbon emission issue are all significant, immediate opportunities.

Remediating these issues will only get more expensive over time, especially as inflation returns to the economy. Energy costs may dip now and then, but the upward trend is inexorable so long as we're exposed to energy insecurities.

The way to get the biggest bang for the buck is to remediate these exposures and build out new sustainable systems as fast as possible. Do the math. There's no other solution to that problem. Do it fast. Save the most. Decrease exposures and increase security immediately. Payback is forever. Duh.

There is a lot of low hanging sustainability fruit in many parts of our industrial and commercial worlds.

If you are an entrepreneur or work in an entrepreneurial enterprise, this economy is not the end of the world. You are living through a world-wide economic system change.

Thankfully there is a vast, public demand for measurable improvements in sustainable practices at every level of commerce. Thankfully you can be here to help.

We had a gentleman in town this week doing a seminar at the University for regional marketing execs. While not exactly talking about my world of commerce, his thoughts about branding any enterprise in this economy is an apt way to close.

The following quote is from Mr. Gary Hirschberg, one of the founders of the $300+ million revenue per year Stonyfield Yogurt and a well regarded business writer.

"The best brands are truly the most authentic ones. Brands that really set out to be solutions to environmental problems, water problems, energy problems, climate problems, are going to have an inherent competitive advantage, especially in a world where oil is heading for $200 a barrel."

Sustainable practices make money. Sustainable practices decrease exposures. Sustainable practices increase security.

Measurable, sustainable practices are also the greatest opportunity to build an authentic brand and to create a company that people want to do business with.

The world is changing. Change with it, my friends. Be diligent out there.

Labels: business plans, entrepreneurship, green tech, innovation, marketing, new product development

I really love these photos (click to enlarge), and their stories below.

The top photo is Ms. Chantal Dolou from Togo.

The bottom photo is Mr. Allahverdy Kuliyev from Azerbaijan.

I met them through a Christmas gift I received last year. It was a gift certificate allowing me to invest the value of the gift in loans to small, independent entrepreneurs working with the organization, Kiva.

Kiva lets you lend to specific entrepreneurs in the developing world - empowering them to lift themselves out of poverty. If you like, you get to follow the stories of these entrepreneurs and track their repayment rates. When the loans are repaid, Kiva gives you the opportunity of investing that money in other entrepreneurs.

Loan requests are small by the standards of the developed world. You can sort through Kiva's introductions to aspiring entrepreneurs on their web site. After choosing one or more, you apply the amounts you wish to loan. Your loans are aggregated with those from other Kiva sponsors. When the requested loan amount is achieved, the loan is distributed to the entrepreneur.

I've posted the stories about the entrepreneurs I chose below. I especially like the photo of Ms. Chantal Dolou. I would take Ms. Dolou to any business meeting on any continent and feel confident she would succeed. I know that look. Mr. Allahverdy has a wonderful story that engaged me immediately.

The best part of that Christmas present is the news 1 year later, that both loans are nearly 100% repaid. I will soon get to look for more great stories and wonderful ideas to support. A gift of entrepreneurship that keeps on giving!

I believe Kiva is providing the world with a great service. Like all true entrepreneurs, they have found a problem and are helping fix it. In Kiva's case, the execution of that fix is very well done.

There are many other great organizations worldwide working on micro entrepreneurship and micro finance. I'm in contact with some and receive newsletters from many. I will put up posts about these in the future.

Let's also remember that there are many micro entrepreneurs among us here. In fact, they/we are everywhere.

When you make your choices for all manner of decisions, choose to support the innovators. Choose to support hard work, diligence, vigilance, and courage.

The renaissance age of entrepreneurship is here, and it's just beginning - around the world and, hopefully, around your kitchen table.


Kiva

Ms. Chantal Dolou. Ms. DOLOU, born in 1972 in Gbodjomé in the Prefecture des Lacs in southwest Togo, is single with two (02) children and one sister in her care. She comes from a very poor family and did not have the chance to pursue thorough studies. She became involved then, by her own means, in the trade of basic need food products. To strengthen her business, she benefitted from a loan of $350, which she managed well and repaid without incident. Today, this business continues to grow and necessitates increased loan capital which is unavailable.

Mr. Allahverdy Kuliyev. Allahverdy Kuliyev has been engaged in this business since 2003. Before he rented this tea-house. Having borrowed the loan amount of $400 he bought tea-pots, chairs, tables and this tea-house. He has a lot of clients. His tea-house is a small and he wants to expand the area of his place. All in Absheron region talk about the taste of his tea. Clients have rest over a traditional cup of refreshing Azerbaijani tea in his tea-house. His tea help to people to forget about their problems. He supports to his family with this business. He is 52, married, has 3 children,

Labels: entrepreneurship, funding, innovation

A newly released paper from Harvard economist Edward Glaeser reinforces a theme regarding startups and emerging enterprises that I'm finding to be true everywhere I turn.

Professor Glaeser's paper, "Entrepreneurship and the City", was discussed in the online forum, The National Dialog on Entrepreneurship, a Kauffman Foundation site. The abstract is available from the Harvard Institute of Economic Research. I have purchased the full article, but it's not here yet. However, the abstract and NDE discussion is enough for me to make the point of this post.

While this research looked specifically at what made cities more successful, I have no doubt that the same findings can be said for any region and probably any country.

The paper concludes that it is the culture of entrepreneurship that is critical to the success of a city. Specifically, cities don't have entrepreneurial cultures by some magic stoke of good luck. They succeed because they support and educate the widest number of people who then become entrepreneurs.

Professor Glaesser finds that cities with a skilled and appropriate work force tend to have higher rates of self-employment and relatively higher proportions of small firms.

The paper also concludes that, "There is a strong connection between area-level education and entrepreneurship."

There is no mention of advanced business school training, only education leading to a "skilled and appropriate work force".

Yes. Absolutely. The culture of success is built person-by-person, startup-by-startup, new enterprises becoming small creative, valuable contributors to their cities and regions.
Does that mean all these small new entrepreneurial ventures are going to succeed? Of course it doesn't. Just the opposite. The vitally different - and better - way of asking that question is why is the idea of failure universally seen as nothing but negative by so many people?

Why can't failure be seen as the valuable learning step it can be? In successful entrepreneurial cultures, you aren't looked down upon for failing. You're looked at as someone that's working hard and could use an introduction or two, maybe a referral to a needed link in their next chain.

Now, if your failures involve lots of money and little planning, the value of that lesson is dimmer and can be hard to locate.

If you fail by losing important money in some high risk gamble, that's not failure, that's stupidity.

But if you roll out your startups following the ideas in the slow startup movement I've been writing about and you fail, congratulations! You've learned something valuable without paying much for it. You now know one small thing better than most of the population of the planet. String a few of those together, and you're gold. Nobody can catch you now. You'll know one specific set of things that virtually no one else on earth knows. If you launch your new startup by spending more time than money on it, the world of enterprise becomes an entirely different and more welcoming place.

But you need the culture of support for innovation that only comes from doing it not talking about it.

In many of the circles I travel in, I hear all kinds of supportive talk for entrepreneurship.

This week, I was fortunate enough to see this kind of culture-building support for innovation actually being done.

Was it valuable to for the entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs? There are a few metrics I could use to define success, but let's use one that should have obvious meaning. I saw a large group of people come out on a cold November night in Wisconsin, at the very same time the Green Bay Packers were playing the Dallas Cowboys (both with records of 10 and 1), to share and support their entrepreneurial ideas. Value? Hmm. I'd say.

This was an Inventor and Entrepreneur Club meeting in beautiful Juneau County, WI. Wow. The stories, the mutual support, the flat out usefulness of the entire process was really fun.

Terry Whipple coordinates the meetings. No, that's too orderly a word… Terry mobilizes the meetings. These are very peer-to-peer driven. I'm excited for their organizations. Terry and Sue Noble from the Vernon County Club, and I got to meet before, during, and after the meeting. Talk about getting it! Talking about building entrepreneurial cultures for all the right reasons.

I also came away from a recent Green County I&E club meeting with a similar sense. There are wonderful, low-cost, effective, and highly supportive ways to create a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, one person at a time.

This is new enough for a Harvard professor to be writing about it, and yet surely is as old as commerce itself.

The folks working at these grassroots levels in my state are not counting business plans and filtering them for their high tech/biotech/nanotech sex appeal. They are building cultures of entrepreneurship one person, one relationship at a time. They are building networks on networks, one network at a time.

Sue Noble told me a story about her I&E Club which almost had me in tears. I'm headed to one of their Vernon County meetings ASAP, and will post that story soon.

Professor Glaeser writes that "local entrepreneurship depends mainly on having the right kind of people". And I would suggest that to create the most efficient and widespread effects, the right kind of people would be those that are respected, supported, and trained to learn from failure and to grow in sustainable ways. That's a real culture of innovation.

Terry had posters all over the room reading 'Catch the Culture!'. I got it but didn't post it to my notebook. The next day I read about the Harvard study, stating that regions that create systems for supporting small scale entrepreneurship build successful cultures. Terry suddenly seemed smarter than he'd ever claim.

There is a tantalizing reference in Professor Glaeser's abstract for my boomer entrepreneur buddies. "Self-employment is particularly associated with abundant, older citizens and with the presence of input suppliers." Yikes. Boomer biz with lots of small operations. The research paper is ordered. Stay tuned.

I love studies that agree with me. They seem so prescient. Yet the truthfulness and the timeliness of these ground-up ideas makes perfect sense. The idea of building successful, entrepreneurial cultures from the bottom up has to be true.

Is this a knock on other kinds of enterprise creation? Of course not. Those high tech, biotech and nanotech models can be wonderful and produce spectacular results. What I do intend to say is that those models aren't the only valuable kids on the block. The entire entrepreneurship movement needs support and respect for the whole culture to grow and prosper.

This Harvard study focused on two measures of entrepreneurship: self-employment and the number of small firms. "Both of these measures correlated with urban success."

You do the numbers. Any region needs more entrepreneurs and more small enterprises to be successful. That is NOT the same as more headline grabbing this-tech or that-tech venture funded firms. It's sheer numbers. More entrepreneurs and more enterprises make the culture succeed. From this perspective, risk in the economy of our regions gets spread around and diversified, more people get to contribute, and more people become engaged solving problems. Tell me something bad about this approach.

Thanks, Harvard. More importantly, thanks Terry and Sue and all the other good folks working from the bottom up to create a culture of entrepreneurship for all of us.

To anyone considering their own startup or new enterprise, I'd say "Welcome aboard". We all need you.



Juneau County, WI Inventors and Entrepreneurs Club

Contact Vernon County, WI economic development folks to learn more.

Abstract "Entrepreneurship and the City" (October 2007). Glaeser, Edward L., Harvard Institute of Economic Research Discussion Paper No. 2140

Labels: boomers, bootstrapping, entrepreneurship, innovation, startups, The slow start up movement